Views: Rauner's attack ads on Quinn help GOP party

Without a doubt, the most overlooked aspect of Bruce Rauner’s multimillion-dollar TV ad buy has been his advertising campaign’s repeated attacks on Gov. Pat Quinn.

“Career politicians are running our state into the ground, and Pat Quinn, he’s at the top of the heap,” Rauner says in one of his ads that have permeated the airwaves since last November. “Pat Quinn, a career politician who failed to deliver term limits,” a Rauner TV announcer declares in another spot.

The millions of dollars worth of ads are supposedly aimed at Republican primary voters, but, obviously, everybody else in the state is seeing them, as well. And Quinn, who doesn’t have a well-funded primary opponent, hasn’t bothered to rebut any of Rauner’s multiple attacks. That could’ve been a mistake, particularly considering Illinois’ persistently high unemployment rates, the hostile national climate, the never-ending negative stories about the state’s finances and Quinn’s four-year history of low job performance scores.

If a new Capitol Fax/We Ask America poll is accurate, then Rauner’s months-long unrebutted attacks have helped knock Quinn into a shockingly deep hole.

According to the poll of 1,354 likely general election voters, all four of Quinn’s potential Republican primary opponents have pulled ahead of the long-unpopular Democratic governor.

The self-described party affiliation in the poll was 22 percent Republican and 38 percent Democratic, while 40 percent said they were independents. Nineteen percent of the polling universe was cellphone users.

“Pat Quinn has made a career out of overcoming the odds and the electorate clearly know more about him than the others,” said pollster Gregg Durham. “When that balances out, we may see a dramatically different picture.”

Yes, we may. But right now, voters know Pat Quinn and they really don’t like him.

According to the poll, which had a margin of error of +/-2.7 percent, a whopping 59 percent of likely voters disapprove of Gov. Quinn’s job performance. A mere 29 percent approve of his job performance and 12 percent were undecided.

The poll has Quinn leading his opponents in Chicago, but nowhere else. He’s ahead of Brady 63-25 in the city, and his lead there is similar against the other three as well.

But the Republicans average a six-point lead over Quinn in Cook County, which have been trending Democratic for years.

The bottom line here is that the mostly union-financed TV advertising attacks on Rauner, which will supposedly kick off this week, had better do their magic and disqualify the newcomer or he will just stay on the air until the fall, keeping his advertising foot on the governor’s already hobbled political neck for the rest of the year. It won’t be pretty.

• Rich Miller also publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com.